2012 BMW M5 leaks

2012 BMW M5 (F10) photos leak after private reveal

The 2012 BMW M5 in all its glory

The first photos of the 2012 BMW M5 (F10) have leaked after a private presentation in Munich, ahead of the official reveal at Shanghai later this month.

As is often the way with new cars, there’s lots of pre-amble until the point where car makers deliver them up at a Motor Show or an appropriate location.

The more desirable the car, the bigger the hype and tease tends to be. Which is why the 2012 BMW M5 seems to have been coming forever.

We’ve been running stories on the new M5 since we had video of the 2012 M5 at the Nurburgring back in 2009. BMW’s own efforts kicked off more recently – a whole year after BMW launched the new 5-Series – with a teaser video of the new M5 playing in the snow.

But it’s no surprise BMW started teasing the M5, as we expect the official 2012 BMW M5 launch at the Shanghai Motor Show later this month. Ahead of which BMW has been showing off the M5 to invited journalists in Munich this week.

Now if you get invited and you go to just such an event you’re honour-bound not to break the embargo on information and images imposed by the car maker as a condition of the invite. But we didn’t go to Munich. In fact, we didn’t even get an invite.

So when the image at the top dropped in today we saw no reason not to run it. And the ones in the gallery below.

Which will have to suffice until all is M5-official at Shanghai.